Friday, October 31, 2014

The old America, real and retro

Retro Jukebox featuring Kate Davis: "All About That Bass." A good pop song, which is why it works across genres, but this is MUCH better! Thank you, Alex Trivunovic. I wondered if it's just the singer/bassist's accent — yes, have the girl actually play the bass — or if she really thinks it's "trouble," not "treble." I thought she was foreign, maybe Scandinavian, until I saw her name; turns out it's a blackcent for the song. I know kids stage these performances to be ironic, but it's a glimpse of what a real revival might look like.

Lora Lee, New York, from Malls of America. Of course the '60s malls (and the '60s shopping centers I remember) have panache (Danish ultramodern cool — space age), but malls were part of that blind faith in "Progress!" that destroyed so much, such as real communities and small downtowns, including shops like Lora Lee. (And Cardinal Spellman's American Catholic Church, now broke.) I thought they were wasteful, such as for conserving the environment, which should be apolitical common sense (and not pseudoscience either, Al Gore); why blow all that money on an unnecessary artificial climate? Hubris. Cf. Dead Malls.

And then there was Old Towne, a small but formative part of my childhood, part of the same Victorian nostalgia as Farrell's ice-cream parlors. Part mall, part amusement park, pretending to be Main Street with 1890s touches and no anchor stores, just a hippie-ish romanticism about small specialty shops such as artisans. Magical for a kid. Sorry it ultimately didn't work. It was a more expensive version of the bazaars I go to, which are nothing new: Booth's Corner, Columbus (with an even better flea market), Berlin, and the seemingly failing Grand Marketplace (R/C car track all but killed the flea market) in the failed Village Mall, where much of the old Pennsauken Mart ended up; all in New Jersey except the first. Sorry I missed the Bazaar of All Nations; it would have been just a long walk away.

Ex-Army on stoking black resentment as part of liberal whites' proxy war on conservative whites (and me on Obama's fake blackness) reminded me this year is an anniversary for me. Counting by using election years, I've opted out of mainstream American politics for 10 years, consistently voting Libertarian nationally and for Ron Paul in primaries, with one dropout year nationally, '08.

American decline is reversing the trend of uprooting young adults. What we need to work on next: parents should stop wasting money on the supposed social necessity of basically sending their newly grown kids off to camp for four years to goof off. Have real college for real degrees such as pre-med, and do the rest (the humanities, great-books programs) with cheap but perfectly good online correspondence courses for credit, or online for FREE for your own edification. The Internet puts the library of Alexandria to shame; it's more than cat videos. And don't look down on vo-tech; you can make great money in a trade and college isn't for everyone. Thing is, for formative social experience (not today's sheltered kids), so young adults can be adults, you need real communities such as extended families, neighborhoods, and towns again, which we largely don't have anymore.

CDC admits sneeze droplets can spread ebola. Travel ban. Quarantine. Now. By the way, the doctor in New York who caught it on his charity tour of west Africa lied to officials about his whereabouts in town before showing symptoms. Sort of gives the game away: that charity tourism is really selfish, showing off.

Interesting professional jargon. Don't forget "idiopathic," medical for "I don't know why." I knew "BCGs": as part of the military's programming recruits (yes, brainwashing; here necessary), they deliberately make you wear ugly glasses (but only during training). Cracked is still non-putdown good most of the time, dealing with history and other facts, except for its politically correct (male feminist) sermons.

Things aren't all sunshine and roses in the real church. Now with The Spectator, Damian Thompson calls them on it: Bishop having affairs was OK; semi-trad parish is screwed over. Conry was ‘one of us’, you see: a member of the Magic Circle of ambitious liberals (life president, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor; honorary press officer, Doctor A. Ivereigh) who had various nuncios wrapped round their little fingers. Meanwhile, what about Catholics who are not ‘one of us’? The libs are dying out slowly; banzai charges like this are to be expected.